Tuesday, June 03, 2008

I like to do a few paintings in a series if I am very interested in exploring the subjects. Here the subject is Communion and the wine glass and the earthenware pot are featured along with the bread, in each painting, I varied the angle and the cloth background and the paintings are totally different, yet still related.Notice how I switched to a yellower green in the second version.Both of these paintings sold to the same collector.I plan to paint larger versions of these pieces for a show I am participating in at Indigo in Defiance Ohio in July.

I love to paint these colorful pieces form pictures I have taken at the Fulton County Fair over the past ten years. The one on the left is 11" x 14" and the other is 8" x 10". It is amazing to me how changing two colors on your palette can alter the color harmony and feel of a painting.

Our group ended up painting a fire chief in full dress uniform. He was a personable guy named Jerry and I sold him his portrait cheap too because he told me his goal when he retired was to do mission work in a South American country. This one is a large painting in pastel on colorfix-primed watercolor paper.

I took a workshop with master pastellist and portrait artist Judith Carducci in May at the Toledo Artists Club. Judy is a colorist, like me! She loves color and she knows a lot about it. I painted in oil days one through four and in pastel on day five. The first painting was this one, Roger, a fireman. I made the background quite warm because he is a fireman after all.